Lee Child, The Enemy

Jack Reacher is a maverick. He is an elite Military Police officer in the Army. And on New Year's Eve, he finds himself suddenly reassigned to Fort Bird, with no explanation. The next day, he gets a call that a general, who was passing through the area on his way to a meeting at Fort Irwin, was found dead in a hotel room, apparently of a heart attack while sleeping with a prostitute. While this doesn't start off as too mysterious, hours later the General's wife is found murdered during an apparently burglary attempt at their home in Georgia. And Reacher notices that the General's briefcase is missing. His investigation starts to turn up some strange patters, like that Military Police officers all over the Army were mysteriously reassigned at the same time as Reacher. Something must be afoot. Two days later, a Delta officer, Carbone, is found dead on the base, and another Delta officer is found murdered and dumped a couple hundred miles away. Something must be going on. And seems to all stem from the briefcase.

Reacher, under some suspicion himself from the Delta troops and meeting fierce resistance from his newly appointed commanding officer, wings around the globe trying to track down this odd conspiracy, which seems to all stem from the briefcase's contents, whatever they are. The only thing that seems to be missing is the agenda for the meeting at Fort Irwin, but the General's two subordinates insist there was no agenda (which Reacher sees as a near impossibility for the Army). Reacher and his partner, Summer, are forced to sneak throughout the East Coast and even hop over to Germany on stolen travel vouchers (and officially AWOL thanks to their commanding officer) trying to bring the truth to light. It comes out the the sordid plot was part of a power play on the part of some officers from Armored Division to take out strategic elements in other branches of the Army to set themselves up as a more powerful faction in the changing landscape of the army in the new post-Cold War world (the book, written in 2004, takes place in 1990). General Kramer was involved in a homosexual affair with Carbone, and when he died of a heart attack, Carbone apparently discovered the agenda for the Irwin meeting, which involved the plot to kill Delta soldiers among others. Carbone took the agenda, and called his commanding officer (thus, they were the two Delta soldiers killed by Kramer's subordinates, try to cover up the meeting's agenda). Kramer's wife was also collateral damage, as they were searching his house for his briefcase when it wasn't found with the body.

Child's book is a relatively good read, and the mystery certainly proved to be a complicated and sordid plot that I wouldn't have guessed at the outset, even if it proves to be quite far-fetched. The biggest flaw in my opinion has to do with the main character, Reacher. He makes an interesting protagonist, with his maverick ways and his desire to get to the bottom of things at all costs. But he proves to be unscrupulous and vindictive to a fault. He flouts authority, and, most damningly, coldly executes his superior officer at the end of the book, believing him to have been part of the plot. Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan makes such a great main character because of his honor, his "boy scout" character, that means doing the right thing even when it means trouble for himself, always believing right would win out, even when it seemed improbable. Reacher is quite a contrast, doing whatever it takes to get the outcomes he wants.